Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Bird flu 'emergency' declared in Mexico

Today is a lovely day out there. No complaint. We have to thank our lucky stars that we are just battling the haze here in our country, and that too is only intermittently. Out there, people are fighting wildfires in Colorado, unrest in many parts of the world including in Timbuktu where there are tomb attacks, or in Syria where patients at a military hospital in Syria were killed by "custom injections". What about the Eurozone crisis that is causing unemployment rises to record high 11.1%. And more..

The Star reported today that

The Mexican government declared a national animal health emergency on Monday in the face of an aggressive bird flu epidemic that has infected nearly 1.7 million poultry.

The article added that more than half the infected birds have died or been culled, the agriculture ministry said of an epidemic that was confirmed on Friday by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The outbreak was first detected on June 20. On Friday, 1.7 million birds had been contaminated and 870,000 had died at 10 breeding farms in the western state of Jalisco as reported by the FAO.

The emergency was declared on Monday and include provisions for quarantine, slaughter, vaccination, and the destruction of infected products.

Poultry farming contributes up to 40 percent of the total volume of the country's livestock production.